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Church Directory

Elvanto Forums

started a topic
over 3 years ago

Hi all!

I've had a request from some more mature members of my church for a hard copy of the church directory to be provided as they do not like this 'newfangled technology' (aka Elvanto). I know that I can create a report and export it as a .csv file or as a .pdf, however I am unsure as to how to best organise this information in a presentable way.

Can the export to .pdf options be changed to include different formatting options (beyond landscape and portrait) or does anyone know the best way to use another program to best present the .csv data?

Thanks in advance for your help.

Posted by joel

1 person has this question

Elvanto Forums

said
over 3 years ago

I have the exact same situation. Some of our older folks would like a print out. For me another problem is that here in North America our phone numbers are written as follows: (123) 456-7890. Elvanto forces numbers to display as follows (12) 3456 7890. People always ask me why it displays this way.

Posted by kevin.minnett

Elvanto Forums

said
over 3 years ago

[quote=joel]I've had a request from some more mature members of my church for a hard copy of the church directory to be provided as they do not like this 'newfangled technology' (aka Elvanto). I know that I can create a report and export it as a .csv file or as a .pdf, however I am unsure as to how to best organise this information in a presentable way.

Can the export to .pdf options be changed to include different formatting options (beyond landscape and portrait) or does anyone know the best way to use another program to best present the .csv data?[/quote]

At the moment I would suggest that after downloading you should save the .csv file as an Excel Document (.xls or .xlsx). This will allow you to add more formatting options that can then be printed. We have it in our plans to allow downloads of .xls files directly from elvanto with a little formatting to get your started.

[quote=kevin.minnett]I have the exact same situation. Some of our older folks would like a print out. For me another problem is that here in North America our phone numbers are written as follows: (123) 456-7890. Elvanto forces numbers to display as follows (12) 3456 7890. People always ask me why it displays this way.[/quote]

In regards to the phone number format, you can change the way it is formatted by logging into the Admin Area and navigating to Settings -> People Settings. Here it will give you a list of options for the way Phone and Mobile numbers can be presented.

Hope that helps!

Ben

Posted by ben

Stewart Polley

said
over 1 year ago

Hi Brian!

That's a great example of how to use Mail Merge in a really nice manner.

We're still wanting to do this in a nice manner as well in the future, so keep your eye out for this.

Hope this helps,

Stewart

Brian Roskamp

said
over 1 year ago

I deleted my previous content due to an incorrectly uploaded file.. Here's my original comment again with the corrected files.

This is an old topic, but it might be useful to others looking to generate a printable member directory. We've been looking to streamline our process of creating a directory and I may have found a very viable solution was based on this Elvanto help article and this YouTube video.

Basically, we set up a new custom report similar to the one mentioned in the help article (see the attached directory_report_example.png to see our configuration). We then export the report as an MS Excel file. From there we created a MS Word document using the Mail Merge feature that consumes the data from the Excel file and formats it in a more presentable way (see directory.docx). Finally, we Finish & Merge the to a new document and fix any remaining formatting issues.

I just started playing with this concept, but it looks very promising. You'll probably need to customize the report and template for your specific needs, but hopefully someone else finds this useful.